The Organization

Sustainable Energy for All empowers leaders to broker partnerships and unlock finance to achieve universal access to sustainable energy, as a contribution to a cleaner, just and prosperous world for all.

In September 2015, the world’s leaders came together to agree on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One of those goals, SDG 7, calls for us to secure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030.

Three months later, at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21), 195 nations negotiated an historic climate agreement—one that declared that not only do we need to hold the increase in the global average temperature to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” but we also need to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

Energy is central to social and economic well-being. Yet more than 1 billion people have no access to electricity, while over 3 billion people have to cook with polluting, inefficient fuels such as firewood. And without rapid progress on SDG 7, it will impossible to deliver on other SDGs by 2030.

Energy is also the dominant contributor to climate change.

SEforALL exists to meet this dual challenge: reducing the carbon intensity of energy while making it available to everyone on the planet.

We have three objectives:

ensure universal access to modern energy services;

double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency; and

double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

This will require a radical rethink of the way we produce, distribute and consume energy.

Having played a core role in putting universal access to modern energy services at the heart of the SDGs and Paris Agreement, SEforALL is stepping up to help partners to take rapid, tangible action on those promises.